(Jason, 10)

Man, that's ugly! So is that what an ogre looks like? Boy, I'm glad I'm not an ogre! If I were that ugly, I'd probably die from embarrassment! There are four of them. Maybe to the ogres, they're pretty? But I don't see a female, so probably not. And what's with the corrupted boar? Papa Michael told me that it's best to kill corrupted beasts quickly and to immediately treat any injury one gives. If their saliva or blood enters a normal person, it turns into a nasty illness.

Should I kill the boar first, or the ogres? Papa Samuel and Papa Michael will probably freak out if they find out I killed them, but ogres and corrupted beasts are monsters. Corrupted beasts taint things with their poop and pee, and they like to destroy things and kill people. Ogres like to rape and kill people, and if they catch a scent, they'll follow it.

I could get away just fine, no problems! I use a special, altered wind magic to erase my scent, though Papa Samuel said I don't have much of one to start with. He said Mama Elena said that. I don't stink! That's cool!

I grip the hilt of my short sword as I assess the situation, applying an enhancement spell to myself to bolster my speed. My boots, which I made myself using the hide of a regular boar, are enchanted to resist wearing away as quickly as they normally would with enhanced speed.

Deciding to attack, I draw my sword and run magic through it. Papa Michael lets me forge swords now, and I help him make them for Harold to sell. I've got a large amount of savings, now, though they said they won't take me out to the villages until I'm older and more mature. Once I am, though, I might find something to spend money on. If nothing else, restaurants and inns! Plus more stuffies!

I bet Papa Harold also spends it on women and drinks. Hehe.

Back to the fight, Jason!

The blade of my sword is enchanted for durability and sharpness, enabling it to take more hits and resist nicks and dings better while also cutting things easier. I'd like to use force magic to scramble their brains, but Papa Samuel said that doesn't work. Corrupted beasts and ogres have an innate magical ability, and most creatures with that have at least some resistance to magic, and that resistance makes it pretty much impossible to use magic like that directly into someone. Healing magic works, but just that.

After deciding on a plan of attack, I run forward, the trees passing by quickly as I dart towards the beasts. I jump into the air using a bit of air magic to push myself and spin in a circle, cutting off the head of the nearest ogre. When I land, I slide a few feet, then charge forward as the other three turn around and the corrupted boar takes several steps back to begin its charge.

When I get close to the ogres, I move to the side. They're slow compared to my normal speed, which makes them super slow compared to my enhanced speed. As they turn, I bring my sword up and cut through the second ogre's chest, my sword piercing its heart.

I continue in my charge forward, passing by the corrupted boar as it attempts to ram me. As I run by it, I strike out with my sword and let it cut through the beast's side. Because of its charge, it can't stop or change direction easily, resulting in me gutting it from head to tail. The corrupted boar's charge doesn't stop, its momentum continuing, forcing it to slide across the ground. It slams into the legs of one of the ogres as I pivot, then lunge forward. The ogre was already stumbling from trying to change direction as it was in the middle of turning, so being hit in the legs causes it to fall forward, and I jump just as I reach it, stabbing down with my blade to cut into the back of its neck.

I land on the ogre's back and pull my sword out, then jump off of the ogre and land on a tree branch, which I then leap off of so that I land behind the other ogre. I ram my sword into its back, right where its heart should be, then pull my blade out.

Four dead ogres and one dead corrupted beast! Hah! Take that, Papa Michael! I didn't even have to use magic to fight them!

Unfortunately, ogres and corrupted beasts also taint the ground when they decompose, so I can't just leave them here, otherwise it will take awhile for the land to recover once they start to decay. Thankfully, Papa Samuel and Papa Michael taught me a spell for this.

I use water magic to clean my blade and warm air to dry it, then sheathe it and kneel beside the ogre I just killed. I place a hand on it and focus my magic into a curse spell, one of the only legal curse magics.

Shaping my magic, I perform a purification and decomposition spell. It mixes curse and holy magic, which are normally incompatible. They told me to do them separately, but that's silly. Curse magic and holy magic are normally incompatible, but why should that stop me from using them together when they can work together?

With my two magics working in a single spell, I'm able to control the decomposition while accelerating it, purifying the taint and corruption so that it doesn't affect the land.

When I finish, there's nothing but soil left behind. It's not very fertile, but it's better than nothing. I perform the spell on the other four corpses, then stretch.

"Oh, curses!" I glare at the mounds of dirt.

I forgot to get trophies to prove I could do that to my papas and mamas! Well, Papa Samuel is nearby, so he probably saw it. I think he's been following me as I collect ingredients for the potion Mama Elena wants me to make. It's a challenge, and I have until nightfall to gather the ingredients and until morning to finish the potion, or they're binding my magic for a week and making me train with Papa Michael the entire time.

Doing physical training without magic is not fun. I already do most of it without, since it helps train my body better. According to Papa Michael, magicians who train physically often become stronger than people who don't use magic. He said something about how magic affects the body as well. However, he also said that we can increase our traits further through enhancement magic, like what I did to my speed when fighting the ogres and corrupted boar.

Was that really a fight? I guess it was just a slaughter. They didn't really get to do anything, and only the boar actually managed to try with that charge of its.

Now it's time to find the last few ingredients I need for the potion. I already have twelve of the fifteen. I was looking for the second set of roots I need when I sensed the ogres and corrupted boar.

Hm. Maybe I shouldn't have run off to see what it was my scan was sensing? I'd never sensed ogres and corrupted beasts before, so that was new to me and I had to investigate. But now they're dead! Papa Michael said that it's always best to put down ogres and corrupted beasts as soon as they're found because of the problems they'll cause.

Looking around, I find the direction I came from and use my speed enhancement again to run back to it, then return to looking for the roots I need. They're the roots of a specific type of berry bush, and it's not easy to find. Then, I have to make sure I don't take too many of the roots, or the bush will die.

I wish Papa Samuel would stop sneaking around. He's not that stealthy, and it's distracting me. I had to adjust my scan spell so that it would read his own right, too. That annoying buzz it gave me was annoying. And why does he call that a stealth spell? He's an adult, he should use it better!

(Samuel, 74)

He killed four ogres and a corrupted boar. By himself. With ease. Then, he expertly performed a purified decomposition spell, before promptly returning to where he was to return to searching out Elena's ingredients. He treated it like a normal hunt, not like he was facing off against something someone twice his age might have struggled with alone.

Are we teaching him too much too early?

I continue observing Jason as I contemplate increasing the range of my scan spell. He obviously extended his quite far, to have detected those ogres and the corrupted boar when I couldn't. Scan spells affect each other, though, making it obvious someone is there, which is why I believe he knows I'm here, even if I'm hiding myself from a scan.

Then again, we've been careful to never use scanning magic around him while he's had it active, so he might not know what it means. The buzzing would probably confuse him at most, and with how Jason is, he likely decided to ignore it since it wasn't affecting him or giving him a bad feeling. The strange part is the fact that I'm not receiving the buzz and interference that would signal another scan spell is active in the same range as mine.

When he locates the berry bushes for the roots he's looking for, Jason frowns, then huffs.

"Mama Elena!" He groans. "Why are all of the ingredients you sent me after dangerous?"

Then, he coats his hands in a simple barrier, a type of force magic, and moves aside the thorns of the bush while ignoring the flames of the berries. He digs up some of the roots and pulls them out, before sending them into his dimensional storage.

Jason, she did it hoping you would fail. We are all hoping you would. The problem is, you're too smart to fail something like this. Most kids your age would've thought for a long while, then either given up and come back later, given up entirely, or taken a lot more time to figure out what was needed.

You didn't even try putting out the berries. Most people wouldn't have known that their flames can't be extinguished while they're on the bush, so water magic wouldn't have worked. That means that most people would have tried dousing the bush, but this is Jason…

He somehow knew, even though we intentionally didn't tell him. Did he find some of our more advanced books? He still manages to sneak into the library, even after we sealed the window as well, and this time, Zachary has offered no insight, as he doesn't know how Jason could be entering.

Thinking about the boy's critical thinking ability, he also sometimes displays strange knowledge. The idea of ID cards was not something anyone had considered before, and he created a fully-functional device that could imprint even a non-magician's magic into an item to be used at a later time, a full enchantment for the card with an anti-forge aspect to it that allows it to be easily verified as authentic, and several other things that help with the ID's. We suspect he only had a vague idea at first, then went down one train of thought to another to come up with the full details. It's possible he only started with the idea of the ID's themselves, and possibly the differences in magical signature.

He did need Jared's help for some of the device, but that probably doesn't matter.

Then there was his pipes idea… Normally, body waste is thrown out, usually sent to a waste farm where it's decomposed. We have an underground pit that runs the process while keeping it from affecting our water supply. In the cities, though, there are waterways that run beneath them, which is where the water of cities is drawn from and waste is moved out.

When we purify water for alchemy, we use a purification spell, which Jason thought we used on the pipes for our waste. We didn't use pipes for waste, just for drawing water up from below ground. To him, the idea that we reused waste water was normal and the idea of letting the waste sit and decompose was horrifying.

His face when he discovered the lack of pipes was priceless, and then he said that it explained why he never had to 'flush'. The word was new to us, and is likely from the language he had before he was reincarnated. At this point, we think that's where some of his strange ideas came from.

A reincarnated person has some or all of their memories from their old life, but not the consciousness, which means it develops normally as they grow. All of them came from other worlds as well, which would explain why some things seemed obvious to him when they weren't to us, like the concept of pipes.

Jason seems to be applying some of what he's learned here to that knowledge, as he had to think about how we would clean the waste water. I don't think he had more than basic understanding of his other world's knowledge, as he wasn't sure how the pipes worked. In the end, he suggested force magic enchantments to move the waste through the pipes, with several purifying rune barriers along the way. They would separate the waste from the water, the waste going into a separate pipe.

We modified it to be a redundant system, just in case one of the filtration barriers fails. Jason helped us to modify the whole system so that it runs on mana crystals, and it was his idea to create a sort of reader for if a filtration barrier failed and to let us know when the mana crystals are running low on power and need replacing, even if it was Jared and I who actually created that. Over the last year, he, Alyssa, and I have and improved the system even further to make it more powerful and in need of less redundancy and mana.

It's being experimentally tested in a small town to see how it works on a larger scale. If this succeeds, then we can help decrease the waste that needs breaking down while increasing the supplies of pure, clean water.

In two years, if the experiment is considered a success, Varil City will implement it as well. They've already implemented his idea of using enchanted crystals to light the streets, rather than lanterns.

Not that that was a new idea, but sustaining it? That was another story. The solution came while we were working on the pipes for the house, actually. Part of the better version draws ambient mana from the air, the mana crystals are there to supply what isn't drawn naturally.

A similar system was implemented for the lights. An enchanted crystal set to glow when activated, linked to a mana crystal hidden in the post as well as a 'mana battery', as Jason calls them, a storage device for the ambient mana that was pulled in. All that's needed is to make sure the mana crystals are replaced if they ever run low, but in a city with as much ambient mana as Varil City, that's unlikely.

Jason is quite rich, and he's not even aware of that. He knows about the money he's earned from what he's sold to Harold for the merchant to sell in the towns and cities, but these two pieces of magical technology belong to him.

His Majesty the King implemented a law to allow the protection of inventions after these were revealed to him. Since magicians live an average of one hundred and twenty years, the patents last for that long, and all of Jason's inventions were patented. We might own Sageson Magical Technologies, but he holds the patents they use. If someone else wants to use them, they either have to pay a fee or suffer a hefty penalty for illegal use.

The lights are used in Varil City and all of its academies and universities. Sixty percent of the cost of them is Jason's earnings, the other forty percent goes to Sageson Magical Technologies.

Speaking of our boy, where did he go? I lost track of him while thinking about him.

There are only two ingredients left, so I seek out a daggerwasp hive, but the only ones in the area are missing a certain boy. One of them shows signs of his presence, as the wasps there are busy reinforcing the outside of their hive, something they only do if at least ten percent of the hive's members were killed.

That means that he's…

I need to hurry.

Bolstering my speed with magic, I charge through the forest. If he's gone to the lake ahead of me, he might be in a lot of danger. I was following him to step in should he need it, and none of us believe he can handle what's at the lake, which is why it was the last item on his list. As he is right now, he tends to run down lists in order, rather than looking at the optimal path. He can, when it comes down to it, he just doesn't care to most of the time.

When I reach the lake in the valley, Jason is staring at the tide bison, a bison that stands ten feet in height and possesses dark blue markings on its dark brown fur, its light blue eyes glaring at Jason as a wall of water rises up out of the lake.

Tide bisons are unaffected by physical weapons, they can only be harmed by magic. In addition to that, they possess potent magical abilities, including water magic and earth magic.

Jason, unexpectedly, looks nonplussed. In fact, he's giving the tide bison a look that asks if it really thinks that's supposed to scare him.

I prepare several spells to protect my boy as the tide bison fires several icicles from the massive wall of water it's summoned, but before I can cast them, Jason's already sending his own spells back. Bolts of fire so hot, it's blue. The flames impact the ice and instantly turn them to steam.

"Seriously?" Jason asks. "What was that? You're a tide bison! You're supposed to be dangerous!"

It is dangerous, Jason! Just wait until it starts going all-out!

I form another spell, this one a spear to freeze the bison, and Jason snaps his head and glares at me.

"No, Papa Samuel!" He says. "This is my quest! I can't have help, remember?"

He sensed that.

"Bad tide bison!" Jason looks at the tide bison, raising his hands again. "I need some of the lilies off your lake!"

Electricity forms around his hands as the ground starts to shake, and he jumps into the air, using air magic to increase his height. As he starts to fall back down, the electricity gathers together, a ball of fire forming in the center of it, and he raises it above his head, then yells as he thrusts his hands forward, the ball of fire and electricity soaring forward.

The tide bison shifts the wall of water to block the attack as Jason tumbles to the ground, landing in some sort of crouch with his hands planted firmly on the ground. His spell hits the tide bison's wall… just as a pair of spikes thrust out of the ground beside the beast and impale it through the neck.

"It's called a feint, you dummy!" Jason sticks his tongue out at the creature as all of the water drops down, then he looks at me. "I'm almost done!"

He runs to the water and collects lilies, putting them into his spatial storage, then adds the tide bison into it as well.

We are teaching him too much. But he learns so readily and easily, it's hard to stop teaching him.

(Jason, 10)

"Hey, Papa Jared," I yawn as he enters the forge. "Sorry for the yawn, I was up all night."

"In the forge?" He asks. "I thought you were making a potion?"

"I already finished it for the Mad Witch," I tell him. "She didn't appreciate me waking her up to let her know I'd finished. That's what she gets for making me stay up late to make a potion. I'm ten, I need my beauty sleep."

He laughs and ruffles my hair.

"What are you in the forge for, then?"

"I got an idea," I tell him, then hold up the mana battery. It's a special mana crystal that I encased in metal while enchanting both. "I had to work on it before I lost my genius."

"It's a modified mana battery," he chuckles. "Lost your genius?"

"That's what Mama Elizabeth calls it," I nod. "These mana batteries don't need to draw on ambient mana and can hold more. Instead, someone can put their own mana into it, to charge it themselves! It'll work while connected to an enchantment, too."

"May I see it?" He asks, and I hand it to him.

Papa Jared takes the mana battery and inspects it, looking over the enchantments. I'm not as good as fine forging as him yet, so the case isn't even, but I'm proud of it! It means that in a small village with a low level of ambient mana, their magicians – or even everyday people – could add some mana in for their lights! I'm sure they'll figure out how to make it work, since I know the mana batteries are kept beneath the crystals, not where someone can normally reach.

That's for the grown-ups to figure out. They're the smart ones. I only got the idea for mana batteries from those weird dreams I have sometimes. I don't think those batteries ran on mana, but Papa Jared helped me make them.

Normally, a mana crystal shrinks as the mana inside depletes, so Papa Jared and I came up with an enchantment to keep it from shrinking. Then, we figured out how to make it so that they could draw in ambient mana. I had a bout of inspiration while making the potion last night, and had an idea for how to make it so that people could add mana into them, too. Papa Jared might even figure out a way to make it so that they don't even need to add their mana, they just put their hand on a thing, and it draws it in!

Then, even people who can't use magic can contribute, even if only a little!

Papa Jared starts putting mana into the battery, and then it explodes, sending fragments of metal everywhere. It was a bomb! No!

We start picking up the shards of metal, the crystal's fragments fading away, so we can ignore those. We also make sure to remove the shards that got embedded in our clothes and us, using holy magic to heal ourselves of the injuries.

"What went wrong?" I ask. "It worked when I did it."

"Something we didn't think about," he tells me. "When we made the ones that drew on ambient mana. We need to limit both how much mana can be put into it and how much can go in at a time. I overloaded its ability to intake mana and how much it could hold. We'll need to figure out enchantments so that it stops mana from drawing in when it has more than a certain amount or from having more than a certain amount of mana put into it at a time."

"Okay!" I say. "I didn't think about that."

That's why I work with my mamas and papas. They're adults, so they think of stuff I don't, even if a lot of what I think up comes from those weird dreams and memories I have. The adults are the ones who think of the actual smart stuff, like the mana limits. I can think of smart stuff, too, just not as smart as them. Not yet! I need to go to school for that, but they said that I can't go to university until I turn sixteen.

Papa Jared has me show him the enchantment I made, then we think over the various enchantments we know. He knows a lot more than me. By the time Papa Michael looks for us for breakfast, we've figured out how to make the limit on how much mana can flow into the mana battery at a time.

Papa Michael made scones for breakfast, along with sausages that Papa Harold brought and eggs from the chickens we keep in the pen. After breakfast, I tell Papa Jared that I'll help him more after I do something, and he nods.

(Samuel, 74)

I watch as Jason walks to the library after helping me with the dishes. He did so without realizing I was watching him, he thought I was distracted. What is he up to?

At the library door, Jason makes a few gestures with his hands, and I watch as my enchantment… unlocks. He's using the same spell we use to enter the library. He never used the window, did he? He just unlocks the spell and enters, then repeats to leave.

Ten minutes later, the locking enchantment unlocks, and Jason exits the library with some notes in his hands. This has to do with whatever he was in the forge for, doesn't it? What book did he go to that he didn't feel comfortable asking one of us to let him borrow?